


With the Tides

by booleanWildcard



Series: What the water gave to me [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Creative anachronism, Descriptions of decay, Family, Fantasy World, Found Family, Gen, Gods and Spirits, Grief, Hallucinations, How iruka got his name, Lots of Water, Magic is Real, Memories, Minor Character Death, Spirit Traveling, Supernatural Forces, Trans Iruka, Transmasculine iruka, Underworld, amazons kinda, dead dove do not eat, description of raids, descriptions of dead people, descriptions of violence and their aftermath, ego death, everything in this fic is platonic, gai anko and iruka: terrors of the war band, genderqueer iruka, heavy au, historically appropriate drug use, historically-appropriate violence, inspired by the scythians/sarmations, iruka's patron is a scary angler fish, literally half of this fic is hallucinations, lots of death, lots of non-sexual nakedness, misgendering on the part of strangers, mythology (as real), no canon here, non-linear movements through time, overworlds, religions inspired by ancient religions, seriously not remotely canon, some gore, specifics of trans character's body are mentioned, supernatural entities, superstitions around names, unbeta’d we die like MEN, vague gestures the ancient Mediterranean world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 10:33:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22538137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/booleanWildcard/pseuds/booleanWildcard
Summary: Prologue;[Nothing was the same, after the night that Iruka Called the Waters Down From The Mountain.]
Relationships: Maito Gai | Might Guy & Umino Iruka, Mitarashi Anko & Umino Iruka, Namikaze Minato/Uzumaki Kushina, very vague hints of future kakashi/iruka
Series: What the water gave to me [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1621696
Comments: 11
Kudos: 36





	With the Tides

**Author's Note:**

> I have a handful of heavy AU's in my head, and this is one of the three that I keep coming back to, and the one that's been hounding me lately. I've been mostly drawing in it, but I thought to perhaps write out this prologue in hopes that giving this world some exercise may let it rest for a minute.
> 
> The nerdier notes are at the end.  
This is a fantasy world partially of my own invention, however, it's also drawn very heavily from some academic historical research, and most of the details of the world are pulled directly from that research, particularly the ancient cultures in and around the Mediterranean basin and surrounding areas. Specifically, the war-band is heavily influenced by the Scythians, and more specifically the Sarmations, who were nomadic horsepeople that regularly interacted with the ancient Greeks and who very likely inspired the amazons. I'll note in the end some of the things that came directly from those sources-- i had thought to perhaps include a bunch of footnotes to comment on a lot of this source stuff, but i do not really expect this to get widely read, and so it's not really worth it to do so.  
It is worth noting, however, that this was a culture that didn't leave a lot of records beyond some truly beautiful grave goods in very richly appointed graves. Much of the information we have from them comes from Greek sources, and those sources are biased-- However, most of the academic sources I've read have taken this at least partially into account, and I try very hard to also take that into account. Also, because we have few specifics-- and because this is a fantasy story and i'm not trying to write a book report with some characters in-- I can only START in those historical facts, and develop them out into a fictional world.
> 
> Couple of additional historical notes before we begin-  
-re: the historically-appropriate drug use tag-- this will be more clear later in hte story, but the scythians did have a tradition involving mind-altering substances of many kinds, both in the greek histories and confirmed in the grave-goods. They also had a very rich spiritual tradition involving the using of such substances as a ritual, though it wasn't limited to religious figures.  
-The scythians had much more fluid understanding of gender than either we do or many of their contemporaries did.  
\- there are a few words I use here-- "lord" "lady" "priest"-- that I use for lack of better words. These confer less differences in formal title and rank than one would imply-- though they ARE titles-- and generally indicate a higher level of responsibility.
> 
> This is functionally a prologue. There is a kakashi/iruka story that comes after this, but IF i write it, it'll probably be a little bit, as I want to get farther in Woods first.
> 
> Note on Iruka's specific transness-- Iruka in this story is genderqueer, nonbinary, though he uses male pronouns and generally refers to himself in masculine ways. The nuances of his gendered experience don't really come up very much in this fic (and may not come up later, tbh), but I do want to make that clear. If you were to ask him what his gender was, he'd probably look at you like that was an odd question, and then answer something like "I'm a man. mostly." but that mostly is important, and that's why he catalogues himself (and I catalogue him) as nonbinary.  
if you have a problem with that, take it elsewhere, because I can confirm with certainty that this is a form of trans embodiment that does very much exist.
> 
> FINALLY (and i'm sorry for being long-winded),  
I write for my own edification. It will not be to everyone's taste. If you don't like it, or this is not to your tastes, I understand and sympathize, and would like to politely invite you to seek greener pastures elsewhere.
> 
> I own nothing, not these characters, nor these ideas. If anything inspires you or pleases you, please feel free to take it and spin it off into your own fics and art and ideas.
> 
> I am, as always, indebted to and inspired by the fanfic writers that I have been quietly reading for decades now. I stand on the shoulders of giants, and I am grateful for that opportunity. Thank you for writing and for sharing your works, please continue to do so.

Everything is Different, after the night that Iruka Called the Waters Down.

Iruka does not remember much before that night. His life had been calm. Quiet. Loving. Easy. There had been some things discordant— mostly to do with expectations and interpretations of what and who he was and was going to be— but those things had been minor, far away, still mostly the concern of forever-from-then. He’d been a very small child, young enough that everyone more than a few years older than himself had seemed impossibly ancient, an age he couldn’t possibly imagine reaching himself.

Young enough to remember only discordant snapshots, small moving snippets of memory that were difficult to contextualize or place within time. (Iruka, for example, does not remember what his original name was, or how old he is, or when he was born. The day he celebrates is the day he was found again, impossibly alive.)

But he does remember his parents very clearly, and they are the only thing he really misses. 

He mourns everyone else, so many lives needlessly taken, but he’d’ve never stayed there, in the village of his birth. He was born under the wrong gods’ eyes to live a sedentary life, and he knows that, and what bothers him is the _how_ (rather than the _that)_ it was taken from him.

He remembers his parents clearly, but he wishes he didn’t remember how they died.

The night Iruka Called The Water Down is short in his memory— realistically only a span of a few minutes, though time wasn’t something he was feeling then. 

He’d woken in the dark of deep night, disoriented, to his parents’ urgent calls. There had been smoke in the air, and distant screams, getting closer by the second. His parents voices’ were harsh with fear, as they urged him out of bed; his father was at the door, calling them both forward; his mother hastily bundling him in a half-blanket, discarding the clothes she’d meant to dress him in as his father hissed a ragged “there’s no time for that, we need to get to the river.” He was holding the spear that normally hung over the fireplace, a relic of his youth as a soldier, its tip rusted from disuse. His mother was holding a cooking knife, grip white with fear; she nodded to his father, and Iruka knew things were badly wrong, that she’d allow her young son out of the house in only a blanket and sleep-clothes.

“What’s going on?” He’d asked, his voice reedy and high pitched, but they’d shushed him.

“A raid.” Was all his mother told him, as they three left the house together, parents keeping their bodies low as they ducked between houses— down the thin roadways they could see fire, spreading quickly across thatched roofs, casting dense choking smoke in all directions. The screaming was closer now, and occasionally a clang of metal on metal, and shouts, and raucous laughter, and hoofbeats.

No matter how quickly they ran, the ghost sounds of their pursuit followed close behind them, proceeded by the smoke— several times, they had to alter their course, cursing, taking longer routes because they could see the danger down short ones they’d been trying for. After the third such detour, his father paused long enough to draw them both briefly close, holding them for only seconds, before splitting from them and running _towards_ the sound of violence-- Iruka'd given a cry, surging to run after him, but his mother had grabbed the back of his sleep-clothes, shaking her head, her own fear and pain clear in her eyes. "It's a parent's duty to keep their children safe." She'd said, urging him to movement again, the words etching themselves into his memory.

She'd not been with him much longer, either. Once they were past the houses at the outskirts of the town, running to the long shores of the snaking river, with its choking weeds and treacherous waters, she'd split from him too. They could see their pursuers, breaking from edge the ragged houses, silver swords and bright armor colorless in the moonlight, nearly as pale as the giant stags they rode. There were many other villagers running for the water, but those gleaming swords cut them down quickly, as if those unlucky people were so much like the wheat his family grew in their fields. Iruka would have been rooted in panic, but his mother pushed him forward-- and didn’t follow. He tried to resist, his eyes full of tears, because he could see the other falling, and he knew the knife she waved around so bravely could not save her now. But she looked at him sharply, her words loving for all their bitter harshness-- "Go, Iruka, to the water; don't let me die here in vain." 

Because they both knew what was coming. Indeed, they both knew that even her sacrifice could not save him, but he turned anyway, because she'd _asked_, and ran towards water and weeds that he could no longer see for the tears in his eyes. His head and eyes and heart were swimming, subject to strange gravity; he assumed the rumbling that he heard in his ears and feels in his bones was the rapid staccato his own heartbeat. He knew his mother has fallen when he heard the hoofbeats behind him, yards away, as he approached the softer ground that marks the river's muddy banks-- heard the taunts of the riders, calling to each other. "This is a fast one, look at her go~!" and "Pity we were told not to take human prizes." They were playing with him, and he felt his fear and pain and loss turn suddenly hard, sharp, a spike of icy rage. They were _playing_ with him-- they killed his parents and now they were _playing_ with him, hunting him like a hare-- it was the only reason they hadn't killed him yet, he knew, as they killed his parents and his neighbors-- and oh in this moment he _hated_ these people, those riders of stags, he wanted them to _die_, and he didn’t care that he would too, so long as he could follow _them_ to the world deep below, that he could hunt them as they hunted him now.

He slowed as his feet meet water; he splashed into the cold _cold cold_ of the river water, undeterred by its chill-- the hatred he felt was _so much colder_ than anything physical ever could be. He’d reached the river, as his parents wanted, but there would be no sanctuary here; already, he could hear the splashing of the stags’ hooves in at the edge of the water, knows that the swords are raised and will soon be brought down upon his unprotected back, and so he turned, screaming at his pursuers in wordless rage. There is nothing he could do but scream, and face his fate like the man that he already was—

But his scream was swallowed by the rumbling, which was louder now, and which must not have been in his head after all, because the riders are reigning back their stags at the edge of the water, their taunts dying in their mouths, as they look up the river with fear.

Iruka looks too, and thrills to see a wall of water surging towards them: a flash flood, though it is too early in the season, cresting the muddy banks of the river and carrying with it the debris upstream: trees and mud and bits of houses. 

None of them have time to run-- Iruka only has time to bark out one delighted laugh-- and then the water reaches them. Iruka feels the wall of water hit his body with pulverizing force, feels himself swept up into the dangerous undercurrents, welcomes the pain and the cold and the darkness with joy in his heart, because he prayers were answered and he knows now that he will be chasing these riders, these people who killed his parents, into the bowels of every hell imaginable in the lands beyond waking-- he will hunt them now--

But then there is dark, and in the dark he is not chasing anything. Instead, he is alone, in an endless dusty hallway, so old that he can _smell_ the endlessness of time. It's a bewildering place; unsettling, and moreso because his bare feet make no sound as he walks forward, leaving long trails in dust so thick it feels like soft river sand between his toes.

He is naked in this darkness, and it feels like it should be cold here, but it isn't. Some part of him _is_ cold, somewhere, but not this part, not the part that is walking. Is that what it means to be dead? He'd thought it would be different, somehow.

Iruka walks for a long time, alone with his questions. He doesn't know how long he walks, but eventually the world around him changes, and he is now in a room that feels very crowded, for all that he can only see one person in front of him, high in a throne made of lashed driftwood and sea glass. She does not look well-- she does not even really look human, for all that she wears that shape-- skin shiny and mottled yellow-green and blue and purple-black and shock red, eyes glassy (and far too many of them), hair white and scraggly and longer than she is. He is filled with awe and terror to see her, this horrifying and beguiling lady, and though his heart beats faster (are you supposed to feel that, as a dead person) when she leans forward, bridging the impossibly long distance between them with the gesture, her skeletal fingers reaching towards with the same uncanny movements of a spider's legs, Iruka does not flee. He stands straiter, unsure whether he is frozen with fear or reverence; this pleases the lady, whose smile is too wide and too sharp, her bottom teeth longer and jagged and predatory, her eyes glowing and keeping him transfixed. She pokes him in his chest, on the right breast, still flat due to his youth; this is both a claiming gesture, and a gesture of her pride in him, her pleasure to have such a good and obedient servant, who does not flee from her who has answered his angered calling. 

The place where her fingers touch him burns vicious cold, the sensation sharp after so long in that deadening hallway, unbearable-- but Iruka does not move even as his eyes fill with tears, thinking this some kind of test, and steeling himself because it does not hurt nearly so much as the loss of his parents did —and does—

  
And then his lungs are burning and the horrible sensation of deep bone-cold returns with all the force of the wave that drug him under, that took him to that still and endless hallway, that carried him away from the body that felt such things. There's a dizzying sensation of rising to the surface, strong hands around his middle, weeds that had wrapped around his limbs (a poor substitute for his parents, but strangely comforting nonetheless) pulling as someone dragged him roughly from beneath the river's still and glassy surface. Iruka begins choking immediately, as soon as his head breakas the surface of the water, he twists in the arms that are forcing him away from the water (suddenly he is full of fear, he doesn’t want to go, the water is safety it is the only home he has left and he knows he wants to stay there just as surely as he knows that doing so _will_ kill him this time, as it had failed to do before.) He barely hears the admonishment from the shore, a female voice calling "Leave that, Gai, nothing that's been in the water four days will be wearing anything worth salvaging against the stink!" 

The chest attached to the arms vibrates with the answer, "This one's still alive!" The arms ignore Iruka's weak struggling, only dropping him on the muddy ground once they’ve cleared the water, pounding his back roughly to help Iruka's own lungs along as they fight desperately to clear themselves of water. Iruka half-coughs and half-vomits out water, gasping for air that pierces his chest with the sharpness of knives, almost as painful as the Lady's touch had been—

There's the soft sound of hooves in soft muddy earth, and Iruka recoils backwards automatically, still coughing; these hooves are not those of a stag's, however; they are attached to a short, stocky creature whose body mostly resembles a pony, but with broad wings currently held half-splayed at its sides, its fur mixed thoroughly with feathers, densest on the long neck and long head whose end is a sharply tapered beak, rather than the soft lips of an equid. _Hippogryph_, his brain supplies. These, then, are the Horsemen who live nearby in roving bands, who occasionally come-- came-- to the village to trade, said to live lives as wild as the badlands through which they endlessly roam. 

The hippogryph's rider, a girl only a few years older than himself, is still talking to the person who'd dragged him to shore-- a boy still only slightly older than herself, and clearly the leader of their two-person salvaging band. "Nothing can have been still alive underwater that long, Gai,” and then she is looking at him with a frown, "She must've fallen in the water later-“

Iruka realizes that they're talking about him, his poor mind still having trouble adjusting to the world of light and tangible sensation; he ties to puff himself up with pride and rage, but primarily succeeds only in spurring himself to another bout of coughing, thanks to the harsh sensation of air still now to his lungs. "He!" he manages to correct through the coughs, "I'm a he, and I am- this was my village-" 

It is that moment that the events from before he Called the Water catch up to him, heavy in his mind; his body is too exhausted to summon tears, his mind still numb from stasis and then revival, but he draws back in on himself nonetheless, shivering and sorrowful, not noticing the sharply meaningful looks exchanged by his rescuers.

Said rescuers conduct an entire conversation in meaningful looks and scowls and glares, but it's Gai who gives voice to the decision. "He's Beloved of The Water." the boy announces, every word given special emphasis, "We cannot spite the Lady of the Water! Particularly not when she claims a priest so-" there is a strange faltering pause, "youthful. Literally." 

Iruka feels another surge of frustration at the strangers, but he is physically and emotionally too tired to do more than hide his head in arms crossed over his knees. He ignores the blanket that is draped over his shoulders by the girl, who’s dismounted her hippogryph and is muttering something about being cold as death, and Iruka only gives the briefest of pro-forma struggles as he was lifted onto the Hippogryph’s back-- he’s never been mounted on anything before, his parents not rich enough to afford even an ox or a horse. The height makes the world spin, and he clings to the girl's back, hiding his face in the back of her jacket. The girl-- "My name is Anko," she tells him, as she steadies him against the vertigo, "Hold tight to me so that you don't fall." And her voice is kindly, for all that it is still tinged with sarcasm, a bit of uncertainty, and perhaps the slightest edge of fear. "Who's to say you're as impervious to falling as you apparently are to drowning?" 

Iruka does cling to her. Gai mounts his own hippogryph, who's been standing patiently some yards away. "Our scouting is complete!" he announces, "We'll go back around the village, not through.”

Anko protests, "But that's so much longer--" but her protests die as Gai shoots her another Very Serious look. 

"It would be unkind." he says, with the wisdom of someone much older, for all that he has seen, than his body says he should be, and then urges his hippogryph forward. Anko says nothing, nudging her own mount with her heels.

Iruka does not initially know what he means, but realizes fast enough, as they make their way up the shoreline. Though the harsh waters had swept many of the corpses away, there were still those who hadn't quite been within the flood's reach, and those corpses still lay where they fell, recognizable despite the several days of decay, sped along by the warmth of spring's end. Iruka makes a strangled noise as they pass what had once been his mother, and hides his face in Anko's shirt oncemore; this time, the tears do come, his small body shaking with the force of them. Anko pats him awkwardly on the arm, as if unused to offering comfort, but does not ask questions nor offer him any words of consolation-- something for which Iruka was grateful. He wants his mother, his father, his family, not some stranger's empty words.

But his mother and his father and his family are no longer accessible to him, and he’ll have to make a new life for himself now.

Contrary to the saying, time does _not_ heal all wounds, but time and beloved people do make some hurts easier to bear. Iruka learns this, but slowly. Iruka is initially brought before the leader of Gai and Anko's people-- an old man, wearing rich clothes and finely-wrought gold, the brightness of these ornaments a high contrast to the whiteness of his hair and long beard. The man looks at Iruka seriously through glasses, idly smoking a pipe favored by the priests of his people, and listens to Gai and Anko recount how they found him. Iruka is stone silent, looking at the floor, only paying half attention-- he answers the battle-king’s questions sullenly, in single words, feeling nothing but the pain of his loss. This man is the fearsome Hiruzen, stories of whom are— were— whispered in the village of his birth, sometimes used to terrify children into obediently coming home before dark. ("Don't get caught outside the village after night falls, always come back before too long, or else Hiruzen the Terrible will catch you and feed you to his beaked horses~!" Well, here Iruka is, and he doesn’t really care if he is to be fed to the beaked horses anymore, because all of him hurts in ways that he is too young to understand or really even grapple with.)

But Hiruzen The Terrible does not seem to be offended at the small boy's monosyllabic answers, and instead listens very carefully to the youths who brought Iruka here with as much respect as he might listen to his seasoned battle commanders, taking Gai's pronouncement ("We have found a priest! He is beloved of the Lady of the Water, he survived under the water for four days and it is a sign! We must not offer the Great Lady the offense of scorning such a gift as he!") very seriously. When Hiruzen speaks to Iruka, his voice is gentle, kindly, as if he understands some of the hurt Iruka is feeling. At the end of his exchange, he asks two additional questions, and these two actually do draw a startled response from the recently traumatized child:

"Do you want to be a priest?"

People didn't usually ask children things, about what they wanted for their future, much less took seriously the things those children knew to be true and wanted-- young though Iruka is, he has already learned this lesson, and harshly. Iruka looks up, momentarily surprised out of his numbness. "I-" he starts, and then pauses, "I don't know?"

Hiruzen meets the small boy's brown eyes, and speaks to him carefully, like Iruka is already an adult, like he is old enough and wise enough to make such important decisions as this. "Did you-" it is surprising, also, to see the wizened man struggle for words; adults always seemed to know everything, even when they obviously didn't. "Did you- see anything? When you were under the water?"

Iruka is so shocked that his memory and his mouth casts out before the rest of him can stop them. "I- yes? I don't remember being under the water? But there was a hallway, and a- a--" he draws back into himself here, remembering the fear and the pride and the reverence he felt for the figure on the driftwood throne, "she had long fingers and she touched me on the chest and it hurt." Iruka puts his hand up to his chest overtop the blankets automatically, indicating the location from memory-- the skin there is bare, unmarred, but he could still feel the ghost of the sensation.

Hiruzen sits back, nodding seriously. "Very well." To Gai and Anko (and the guards and courtiers behind them, watching the proceedings with varying level of interest) he said commandingly, in the voice of a leader, a battle-king, "Take this boy to Lady Kushina." To Iruka directly, he says, more kindly, "Lady Kushina is the head of the priests. They will raise you up, and when you are old enough, you will decide whether or not you would like to be one of them." His tone is very serious, particularly as he adds, "And you do not have to be." 

Iruka nds numbly; there isn’t much else that he could do or say, and he follows the gentle pressure of Gai and Anko's hands, as they direct him out the door. 

Iruka, though a foundling, is unusual for his placement and his circumstances, and so Kushina takes him into her own tent as a son, of sorts. He is a silent presence there, initially, and she accepts this. She never calls herself his mother, and never makes an attempt to take that place in his heart, but she is kind and loving and affectionate, and she comes to occupy a similar place for him nonetheless, no matter how hard Iruka resists it. Years later, when he finally tells her this, she looks pleased beyond words, but comforts his guilt, telling him that it's not a betrayal of his mother who birthed him, who died to protect him, to think of Kushina so. She'll never replace Iruka's birth mother, and she would never want to. "Love is not finite, it is not a resource that can be exhausted." she tells him firmly, hugging him close. It is the second piece of advice given to him by one of his mothers to etch itself firmly onto his soul. 

It is also Kushina who gifts him with one of his names, on that very first day he comes into her tent as family. "Anko and Gai tell me that you came to us from the water." she says to him, ignoring the suspicion in his eyes. "As Priests, we choose our own name, if we survive the night we walk with the dead, and return unscathed. But in the meantime, we need to call you something, and so I will call you Umino. Is that okay?" 

This is the second adult to ask for his counsel on such an important thing--first his future, and now a name. He considers objecting, considers demanding his own name,the one his parents gave him, but the thought draws him back into himself again, fills his eyes with tears, and he feels small and young and helpless. No. That name can stay a secret, it can die with his parents. He feels Kushina's hand, warm on his shoulder, an offer of comfort. He doesn't react, but he doesn't shrug it off, either. Instead, he speaks into his knees, asking "What's it mean?"

"It means, from the sea."

Iruka looks up then, tears still running down his face, looking upset and confused. "What's the sea?"

Kushina smiles wanly, looking at him with eyes that have also seen loss, and that convey this to him wordlessly. "The most marvelous body of water in the land where I was born."

Iruka looks her in the eyes for a long time, and then nods. "okay, that can be my name."

"It's what I'll call you," she corrects gently, ruffling his hair. "You'll choose your own name, when it's time." 

And so he is known as “Umino,” until he takes his initiation. 

Iruka takes a long time to warm up to these strangers,but they do not seem offended, and they give him the space that he needs. The priests seem to approve of this, of this seriousness that sometimes manifests as aloof observation, as fiery temper, and— paradoxically—as mischief-- good spirit, Kushina tells him, it marks him as promising. 

It helps that he only ever has to tell any of the war-band to use “he” once, and then they usually remember, and do not make the mistake again.

He learns about them, too. They are a traveling people, nomads by choice and tradition, and it is a choice which they make with fierce pride. They do not grow their own food, as Iruka's family did, but they do trade for grains and vegetables. They raise animals that can rove alongside them-- sheep and cows, some horses, and the hippogryphs for which they are famous. They do— Iruka realizes belatedly with some shock— informally cultivate various plants, encouraging certain edible species and culling the non-edible varieties around the places where they make camp for several nights at a time. They love jewels and gold and finery and bright colors, and the wagons they lash to their horses and oxen when they move camp are as finely decorated as the clothing they wear. They have great pride in excellent craftsmanship, both of their own artisans and that of other cultures’. They cover themselves in tattoos to mark their victories, and drink heartily to mark both joyful and mournful celebrations. They are fearsome with their bows-- disastrous recurves that can shoot arrows farther than the eye could see, and pierce even metal armor. They know the reality of spirits and magic, and they take their gods very seriously (and so they tend to look at Iruka with a strange kind of reverence, one that he's not sure he’ll ever be comfortable with). They do not begrudge each other for what comes naturally, so long as it doesn't hurt other members of the war-band. Their lives are hard, but warm-- far from the barbaric wildness with which they were described by his original village, who must've only known them through trade and as tavern guests. 

Iruka is wary and standoffish, initially— and so they treat him like the hippogryphs they tame, giving him space and pushing him only when necessary— and even then with surprising gentleness, for a people so dedicated to hunting and war. Anko and Gai found him initially, and thus it is Anko and Gai who work with him the most, and treat him the most patiently. 

They teach him how to ride the hippogryphs that initially terrify him, how to string and shoot the war-band's terrifying style of bow, how to hunt and how to enjoy it. They celebrate his first kill (a wild stag— auspicious), and teach him how to dress it where it fell. They teach him how to survive in the wild, away from the war-band, should he ever be separated from their home-- which _is_ starting to truly be a home, for all its unfamiliarity to the place of his birth. He is young, still, and that made the transition easier.

Perhaps it's the patience, or perhaps their relative closeness in age, or perhaps it's their general temperaments, but eventually the three of them become inseparable friends, and then the terrors of the war-band at large. The other two are warriors, and Gai is starting to achieve some prominence within the warriors’ ranks, fast becoming a protege of Lord Minato, one of Hiruzen's finest generals. Both are trained to do the flashy war-magics that make their people so terrifying in battle, and both are adorned with tattoos that mark their strength and valor, given to them by the adult Priests who have passed their initations. Iruka regards both of these facts with jealousy, but particularly covets the twisting animals and vinelike linework on their shoulders that distill so much power directly into their skin. "Patience, Umino!" Gai always tells him with a laugh, "So much Youthful Energy! You'll earn yours soon enough, when you become a Priest!" He always follows the words with the kiss to the top of Iruka's forehead, the gesture of a loving older brother. Gai is convinced this is Iruka's future, but not in a way that seems demanding or proscriptive-- rather, Gai seems to have taken it as an article of faith that Iruka is a small miracle unto himself, and thus the inevitable source of countless future miracles, destined to become the greatest mage the war-band has ever produced. Anko always rolls her eyes-- even though she absolutely believes this as much as Gai does-- and instead draws on Iruka’s skin with special paints made from crushed berries and boiled bark and soot, marks of protection and charms that unblooded children of the war-band _are_ allowed to wear, to mollify Iruka’s pride. He appreciates the gesture, though it still stings-- but the traditions of the priests are edicts from the gods, and no priest may have a true name nor wear the marks of a warrior until they've walked with the dead and come back from it.

Iruka doesn't tell anyone that he already has done this, and most of them already suspect it. Nevertheless, the Traditions are operative, and it feels important to follow them. Wordlessly, in that same way that the other priests just Know Things, he understands that the events of that night-- those nights, under the water— were a Different Thing, that part of him had to die to survive, that even those who walk among the dead only rarely meet actual gods, and probably for good reason.  


In truth, it's mostly Anko and Iruka who together become the terrors of the warband. Gai is often occupied with other duties, and _when_ he gets roped into the mischief, Iruka suspects it's mostly because he has very few immunities to Anko's cajoling, and absolutely none to Iruka and Anko's combined efforts to make him a partner of crime. Kushina heartily approves of this mischief, and not _only_ because it usually results in Minato bringing home a completely unchastened Iruka by the metaphorical scruff. Iruka only doesn't mind the shamelessness of their flirting because it means they're too distracted with one another to admonish him as thoroughly as they probably should. 

The formulations that Iruka and Anko invent together for paint bombs and other agents of chaos are _legendary, _and those who deal with the pair of them regularly become well-practiced at finding all kinds of obnoxiously clever traps in many different obnoxiously clever places.

Most of these exploits are intentional, but a few are not-- most notably, there is an incident where Iruka _somehow_ turns Hiruzen's beard and hair a brilliant shade of pink that lingers for about two weeks. This is also the only time wherein Iruka fears _serious_ reprisal, but the old man simply sighs deeply— such is the nature of untrained priests— and says "Well, I suppose I should be glad that you're getting comfortable here, but it seems I shall have to keep a closer eye on you, our youngest acolyte." 

Iruka finds himself having regular meetings with the old man after that, and was surprised to find that these are more lessons than they are punishments, and that the old man seems to have a very sincere interest in his well-being. 

In this way, Iruka finds himself with a second almost-father, along with his second mother.

He adds adds a third father to the count shortly thereafter, when Minato and Kushina made their union official in the eyes of both the war-band, and the gods and spirits alike. They combine their living spaces into one, but Iruka is still welcome among them like family, as if their child by blood. It's.. different, than the family to which he was born, but it’s still family.

Iruka learns that there are many kinds of family, but all of them are for cherishing.

When Iruka is of the age that Anko was when she and Gai found him, Kushina comes to him on an otherwise unremarkable summer evening, uncharacteristic seriousness in her expression. "It is time for you to choose the path for your future in the war-band." she says, formally. 

Iruka nods, understanding the solemnity, and answers "I choose to be a priest."

Once, he'd had reservations-- and he's never grown comfortable with the way that the rest of the war-band looks at him, or the sincerity of Gai's convictions about his future-- but though he's never understood it, he often finds himself in that endless dusty hallway in his dreams, often feels the burning impression of spider-like fingers on his chest. He knows what that means, and he'd rather earn his tattoos by the means compatible with that service. 

Kushina nods, face carefully blank, and leads him out into the dense humidity of the thick summer evening, to a small one-person tent. Minato is already outside, his face showing all the nerves that Kushina's isn't allowed to wear. If Iruka's here, that means he's chosen the path that involves initiation, and they all know the dangers involved-- but, of course, Minato makes no move to stop this, just as none of them would stop him from going to battle. Kushina hugs him close for a long minute, and then ducks into the tent, carrying a small basket of dried green bundles with which to start the fragrant smoke bath that precedes the initiation. Then it is Minato's turn to hold Iruka close, squeezing his shoulder with his large and scarred warrior’s hand, before stepping back. Kushina emerges from the tent a moment later, followed by a small cloud of acrid smoke. Iruka looks at them, gives them a half smile both, and then does as ceremony dictates— he strips bare, handing his clothing to Kushina. One must go through the process of initiation as naked as the day they were sent into this world, because this is another kind of birth.

"We'll be back for you in the morning." Minato tells him. 

Iruka wants to say something, but he can't think of the words, his throat thick with trepidation and concern, so he nods again, and then ducks into the small tent.

It's unbearable to occupy. The fragrant air is thick in his lungs, and it is hard to breathe, every breath painful. The smoke is hot and sharp and makes him cough, frequently and hard; it makes him lightheaded, makes his skin prickle and the wjp;e world swirl. This purification ritual is a small ordeal unto itself, and one of the many ways to fail initiation is to flee, or to refuse to throw another handful of leaves onto the coals whenever the smoke gets thinner and the breathing slightly easier. He must time things precisely, because by midmorning, when Kushina comes to collect him, the basket of dried leaves must be empty, and the brazier still burning.

And it is an _ordeal, _the first of many. Iruka realizes that part of the reason for the nudity is the _sweat, _which pours from his scalp and his neck and down his face and his back. It's nearly unbearable on its own, and clothed it would be impossible. The other reason is a strange tenseness that comes to his skin, like the feeling that he is too big for this flesh that he wears, and that his skin and his bones are kinds of prison— clothes would be so much worse, like chains. The sensation makes him want to scratch and wriggle and thrash and flail, to free the thing that he is from the feeling of tight restriction. 

He wants _generally_ wants to thrash and wiggle and flail and dance, and is struck by the injustice that this tent, to which he is confined, is so small, so tight, so claustrophobic, like his skin and his flesh and the world of corporeal bodies. He lets himself writhe in place, careful only that his movements do not disrupt the brazier, because another way to fail initiation is to spill the coals. 

Iruka feels many things that night. He has no visions-- which is mildly disappointing-- but he is struck by the impression of things outside the tent, things that move and dance; he tries to sway with them from his seat. He feels many things: fear, exhilaration, trepidation, curiosity, something like homesickness-- for the lands of the dead?-- and a kind of _wanting hunger_ in the back of his soul that he's never entirely been able to name or understand. He feels most of these things at once, and it's all he can do to keep up with the emotions, the thoughts, the sensations, the things he imagines but can’t quite see. He thinks of the ocean for which he is named, which Kushina has only described to him; he thinks of the pull of the water; he thinks of the feel of the crash of the floodwaters he’d called against his small body, the certainty he'd felt that he was dead and that all the bones in his body had surely broken, and the pride and feral joy that had surged through him, to know that he would hunt those bastard stag-riders down to the depths of hell; he thinks of fish, of the scaled fish that kiss his ankles whenever he can get in the water (something he still loves to do, which terrify Gai and Anko and the others of the War-Band, because none of them but he and Kushina ever get into the water willingly, much less swim), of the big grey fish whose sleek bodies are only occasionally seen in the rivers and who never fail to make Kushina excited and cheerful for days (Dolphins-- _Iruka--_ she calls them, a good omen for families.) 

When he thinks of the water, and it is comforting, and he almost doesn't feel the pain of the smoke in his lungs or the oppressive heat pressing on his body or the sweat running down his back and his thighs and his forehead and into his eyes. 

He never sleeps-- that had been his biggest fear, that he would fall asleep in this confining space, and thus fail to feed the basket of leaves to the fire at the pace required. 

He also doesn't feel time, and so he is surprised when his hand reaches deep into the leaf basket and finds it empty, and he opens his eyes to see that everything is washed in the brighter light of morning, as visible through the tent's fabric walls. He is looking around himself, bewildered, looking for any stray leaves he must've accidentally knocked from the basket-- that couldn't have been the entire night, could it-- when he hears movement outside the tent (bigger movement, or more present movement? it's hard to characterize, but it's different from the spirit-noises he'd been hearing through the night). “Umino, it's time." The gentle voice is Minato's.

There's an hour of rest between the next part-- the _real_ ordeal, Iruka realizes through an exhausted haze; _that_ was just a taste. He's grateful to be brought to a warm bath, scented with oils, into which he gratefully reclines. Anko and Gai spend that hour with him, tense but trying very hard to pretend everything is as normal: the next stage of the initiation is the part that's actually lethal, and that weighs heavily on everybody's mind.

Everybody's minds except Iruka's; he is pre-occupied with other thoughts, because he knows what is to come, and his name is not the only thing that he must choose. Every priest must bring themselves to the land of the dead, so as to walk there and return, and this is done with fire and pain. A brand is prepared-- likely being heated even now, by Kushina-- in the shape of an animal chosen by the head priest to be the child's protector, but the place of its application is the choice of the initiate, limited only by what the initiate can reach to hold the brand to. This was the last chance for failure: the initiate has to be willing to hold the brand to their skin for as long as the pain would last, after which point a poultice mixed with herbs and venoms similar to those used for the fire would be rubbed into the wound, to encourage visions during the coming fever.

And there was always fever. It was why so many did not survive.

(Or, as only the Priests knew— the _physical_ reason.) 

Kushina comes for him after about an hour, once the water has run cold and his feet and fingers are thoroughly pruned. Anko has spent much of the past hour braiding his hair, and so there is a fine network of braids there, interwoven with bright glass and gold beads, instead of his usual ponytail. All of them-- these people who have become his new family-- walk with him to the fire, where wait the six other priests of the war-band, each of them with their own scarred marks exposed. Iruka ignores them, and mostly ignores the ritualized words that Kushina speaks-- they are instructions, and Iruka knows them already. His attention is almost exclusively fixed on the brand in the fire, its surface already red-hot, delicately twisted wires and flat panes in the shape of fox's head. It is large, large enough to place where he is thinking. 

Priests are not the only people of the war-band to be branded (though they were the only ones treated such to deliberately bring about the fever). There is a tradition among those in the war-brand who grow breasts, to cauterize away the breast of the arm with which they draw back the arrows in their bows, most often done by those who chose to become warriors. This is done young, as young as when Iruka was first found, or younger-- when the child is old enough to choose their own path within the war-band, to announce that they wish to be a warrior, but young enough to divert strength into the muscles of the shoulders and arms. Some choose to take the other breast too, but not always, and it was their parents who held the brand to their chests, and who nursed them carefully afterwards. 

It had not been offered to Iruka because he'd been given the extra time to decide his own fate, but now he has decided— though he will have to hold the brand for long enough to cauterize his own half-formed flesh completely. 

When Kushina finishes, she turns to him and says, voice smooth and resonant despite the fear and worry that's painfully clear to Iruka in her eyes, "Are you ready?"

Iruka nods, “I’m ready," and then Kushina gestures for him to continue. She only breaks the protocol to touch his hand, as he reaches towards the brand's handle, sticking out of the brazier that heats it. She knows what Iruka is going to do, and so she gives him extra advice, "Hold it only a few seconds after the pain stops, lest you lose the use of your arm."

He nods, and takes the brand. His mind and body recoil at what he knows that he's about to do, but he's prepared for this, he knew it was coming. Before he could give himself time to recoil completely, he brings the brand to his chest, only slow enough to aim as brings it the flesh he means to burn away. He gasps at the intensity of pain he knew was coming, but which no words could prepare him for, lets himself go to his knees as he weathers it; his hand and body shakes, but he doesn't bring his hand away until it is time to, until the mark is burned deep into his literal breast. He is barely conscious when he finally takes his hand away, lets the brand fall uselessly to the ground beside him; there are hands on his back, he doesn't know whose, and then he is gone completely.

There is no time in the lands of the dead, but a great deal happens, much of which he does not remember.

He is on a boat, in repose, sailing down an endless pale river. The sky is bright, but not with the sun, and everything is strangely gray, save the boat, which is resplendent in color. He is spread out on a raised platform to the center of the boat, dressed in fine robes, open at the chest. He is older than the body he just left, an adult- one breast is small but completely formed, and the other flat and scarred, though instead of a mark in the shape of a fox’s head— Kushina's clan's avatar-- there are long glowing streaks, the shape created by long spidery fingers being dragged along his chest. He sits up, feeling strangely winded, like there is no air here. Where are we going? he asks, and though no voice emerges, he knows those rowing the boat heard him. They are multitudinous, spread along the boat, wielding long oars: strong men with the heads of birds. There are a few bird-headed men not at the oars, but only the one with the cardinal's head spares him half a glance. They are watching the water, looking for a giant snake who seeks to eat them. None spare him any answers.

He is back in his body, that night, the night his family died, the night he Called The Water and Met The Lady, the night that started all of this. He is being woken again, by his parents, and he's terrified. He cries, and clings to his mother and his father. Stay, Stay! he cries, They will kill you! he cries. His parents ignore him, his mother carries him from his bed.

And then he is running alone, but he is older oncemore, the same age as he was in the boat. He is dressed as a priest for war, front bare to show the tattoos he has earned, and to better call them in battle— many of them, but shifting and unclear when he tries to look at them, and anyway he doesn't have time to admire himself now, because he must rout these stag-riders, must strike all of them down, must protect his village-- but suddenly the village is empty, but for the wreckage he remembers seeing in the distance for that moment from the back of Anko's hippogryph. He runs barefoot down the familiar paths, but instead of houses, they are lined with destructuction, black wood and charred stone and twisted metal. There is ash and corpses everywhere. He finds the corpse of his father, but he doesn't pause, hesitate, because he is chasing--

well, he _was_ chasing the hordes of stag-riders, but now he is only chasing one stag, a white stag with a white rider, the same and somehow different from those who assailed his village. The man is surrounded by dogs, and though they snarl and gnash their teeth at him, they run. For all that he is now a fox, Iruka feels as a wolf— maybe he is a wolf?— to make such a man and his dogs run in fear-- but there's something else, too, some indefinable wanting, and something angry and fierce and desperate and scared, strong feelings in his chest that are spurring him forward. (His chest, the flat side still glowing with those long streaks, the only marks among the shifting tattoos that hold their shape steady). The man is holding something close to his chest, a small bundle with golden hair, a very young child; the man looks back at Iruka, scared, and Iruka wonders what he's scared of. Is it Iruka? is it something behind iruka? Are they running together, or is this group running from him? And what, exactly, does he want? Because he (Iruka, the wolf, the fox, the human, the person, the priest, the hunter, the warrior, the father-mother, the servant of The Lady, the lover, _which one is he right now_) certainly wants something, and he knows he wants the child, and he feels rage and fear and anger and sorry and guilty and a nauseous kind of want that the child is not _with him right now, _and he knows he wants the man too, but he doesn't know _how_ he wants the man, if he wants the man to just give him back the baby (whose baby, why does he want _that_ baby, it's not his baby, he could never birth something with hair so bright and golden as Minato's, but also that very much _is_ his baby, and he _needs_ to protect it more than he needs to breathe, he _is_ its father-mother), or if he wants the man underneath him: the man's head in Iruka's fearsome wolf-jaws and his blood running down between Iruka's fearsome wolf-teeth as Iruka crushes the man's skull in his jaws; or otherwise the man between Iruka's human legs, under him in a very different way-

And then Iruka hears the water come, rumbling behind him as that first night, but this time he recognizes the sound; he breaks away because no matter _how_ he wants the man, the water cannot have the child, and Iruka knows that the water will follow him--

and then he is under the water, and he cannot breathe. _you have not _been_ breathing_, he tells himself, _the dead do not breathe_, and he finds that suddenly he doesn't need to, and he is floating under the water, strangely peaceful even as the water's rushing momentum carries corpses and broken down houses and trees and earth and soil rushing past his swirling body. He is at peace in the chaos-- his body is changing, his legs merging together, his skin going rubbery and grey, his arms turning to strong flippers, his face lengthening into a beaklike mouth-- only the two glowing streaks on his chest are left from his original human skin. He is one of the fish Kushina had pointed out to him before, he is _Iruka_, the dolphin, and the water is his home. He beats his tail-- a strange appendage, but one he knows how to use far more immediately than his frail human body had learned to use its legs (when you are born to the water of course you know to swim immediately; fish don't need to learn how to use their fins). 

Kushina is on the shore; somehow he knows this; he kicks his flippers down and propels himself through the water, seeking to breach the glassy surface.

He expects to bring her joy, the way the rare sighting of the river dolphins always do, so far inland and away from the sea, but she is crying as she looks at him. He reaches out to her, but fins cannot reach the way human hands can —

he is cold and hot at once, covered in sweat-- he thrashes beneath the weight of furs and blankets, struggling to breathe. His movements dislodge dried poultice from his chest, the wound there-- the fox's head-- angry and red and starting to bleed. Anko! Kushina! Minato! Gai! Where are you! he is crying, he cannot sea, the world is dark and bleary, the room smells like sickness and death, and he feels alone and terrified and cold for all the blankets and the heat---

Gai's face, tired and drawn, but expression warm, appears above his head, lit by a candle; it was merely dark because it was night. I am here. Gai says, voice heavy with sleep but present; Iruka gasps in relief, and then in pain, hands clenching in the blankets and furs, crying. Am I dead? he asks desperately

No, Gai answers, you will not be.

Iruka doesn't know this, and wonders where his fins went, where the boat is, why there is no ash beneath his wolf’s feet and human toes. The water! Iruka moans, grinding his head back against his pillow, as if that might chase the burning pain away from his chest, The water keeps dragging me back.

The water will take you, Gai agrees, but it will bring you back to us. He seems so sure, and Iruka wants nothing but sureness right now; Gai's hand runs through Iruka’s sweaty hair, soothing, deftly avoiding the knots created by Iruka’s fevered thrashing— it can't chase the pain away, but Iruka doesn't struggle anymore, doesn't struggle against the pull of the water, lets it take him away again—

and it does, down, down, down, back to a gray place that smells of nothingness and ashes, where neither the water or his movements make any sound. He is dolphin no more, but he lets the water's pull take him where it will, and it deposits him on a gray shore, in a gray world, the sky dark as night but still somehow lit, as if by the moon. What is this place? he asks the open air, standing shakily; he is damp and naked, but not cold, and once again the marks on his chest are the glowing streaks rather than the molten burn of the fox's head.

Hades, say the familiar voices. The land of the dead. You are upon the shores of the Styx River. 

Oh, he answers, pulling back in on himself. He had been wearing the older body, the one from the boat, but suddenly he is small again, the child he had been when he’d fled his village, small and scared and terrified and so alone. The marks on his chest are still the glowing streaks, but now they burn with cold intensity, the same as when the lady had touched him to put them there.

There are hands around him-- tangible but without temperature at all, strangely muted. His parents are here, and he cries, he lets himself cry, because he had missed them so much, and he tells them so. We missed you too, they tell him, and they three stay like that for a long time, and Iruka-- though there is nothing physical here, nothing that can convey smell conventionally-- Iruka can nevertheless _smell_ the familiar smells of his mother's perfume and his wheat on his father's clothes, feel the familiar rough callouses from his father's workman hands on his shoulder, feel his mother's thick hair against his cheek. He could stay like this forever. Perhaps he would, if he was dead.

Am I dead, he asks, Can I be?

You are not dead, they tell him, and you can choose to stay here, but you shouldn't.

But then I will have to leave you again, he protests, clinging to them as he hasn't been able to in so many years. 

I know, and I'm sorry. his mother says.

But you have other Duties. his father says. 

We did our duty, and you must do yours. his mother says, but holds him close, as if she doesn't actually want him to go. 

Iruka can feel the water, his fierce and relentless mistress, calling him back again; around the three of them, the water-line begins to rise, the surf nipping at their heels, impatient, for all the world reminding him like some of those dogs chasing the pale man and his pale stag. He could stay here, he could tell the surf to leave him, tell the water he was done in its service and thank you for the gifts, but he would stay here with his family--

the marks on his chest burn ice-cold again--

But it isn’t the burn that convinces him, it’s his parents' words. They are right. He has a duty to the war band.

The war-band.

Are you ashamed of me? he asked his parents, resisting the pull of the water-- just a few minutes, just a minute more, _please-_

No, never. His mother says

We are proud. His father says, and opens his mouth to say more, but that nipping from the water had turned into a bite, sharp on his legs and his chest and middle, the Lady's fish-jaws are descending around him, the sharp teeth piercing his soft abdomen while he stands, frozen, once more in thrall to the glowing light of her eyes, dragged beneath the water's surface oncemore--

He fights it only to look back, behind him, at his parents on the shore.

I'll see you again! he calls to them, and then his head is dragged beneath the surface, his fingers leaving furrows in the soft loamy soil of the Styx river's shores-

Pain in his chest, burning, the cold-hot of fever, the oppressive heat of blankets and brazier and hot summer night, the intensity of which could still not chase the fever's chill from his body. Iruka gasps to breathe, whimpering; every breath moves his chest, scratches the newly-applied poultice there-- the fresh poultice, whose hallucinogenic additions burn like fire, like the rotten snake's venom with which the war-band coat their arrows-- his movements crack it as it dries, and the scabs, cause blood to stain the poultice's green to a muddy brown. 

But his whimpering is normal in these surroundings, as is the labored breathing, and so, though he can hear people around him, hear their soft voices, they do not come to his side, are not aware that he is awake, that he can hear them.

"Was yours like this?" that is Minato's voice, low, speaking to someone from several yards away. He sounds exhausted, like he'd been up for hours, emotionally drained.

"I don't know. None of us see and feel the same thing- the visions are always different." Kushina says, and her voice is muffled, as if she is speaking into cloth. Holding Minato, probably. It feels strange, to be eavesdropping on someone else's grief; stranger, that it is probably grief over him. "The fevers don't usually last this long." her voice is tense-- this was not a good sign-- "but he's strong. He's always been strong." Like she’s trying to convince herself of this, in addition to Minato.

Minato holds his silence for a long time, and when he speaks, it is technically sacrilege-- but he speaks it to his wife, in the privacy of their home, to and about their own son, and that makes it somehow allowable. "What- what did you see?" another long pause, where Kushina debates whether to answer, "or- what are you likely to see. What happens, when you walk with the dead..?"

"We die." Kushina said, choosing her words with care. "We always die, but it’s a spirit death, and we can come back from it. But we have to choose, whether or not we come back to the living again."

"You choose?" Minato seems bewildered, as if he couldn't imagine why one would choose otherwise. "Is it possible to want to fail your initiation?"

"It's tempting, and it's--" Kushina sighs, the worry clear in her voice, the worry that always hounds her about her family, cutting through her fierceness and confidence. "you can never _really_ fail initiation. there has never been a priest who has failed initiation; failed is the wrong word, but we use it because you cannot know what the choice is before you must make it. You choose where to serve the god that sponsors you-- from the lands of the dead, or the lands of the living. But either way, you are a priest, and you serve the war band for the rest of your life _and_ the life that comes after. You are a priest when you are chosen by a god, and when that happens, nothing can part you from that service." 

Her voice is small, almost scared; Iruka remembers that her patron was a Lord of Flames, not the Lady of the Water, and he wondered what her trials had been, for there are no animals that lived within the flames, as there are dolphins in the water--

Minato is saying something in response, his voice soothing and comforting, but Iruka is slipping again, away from the body and the fox-brand on his chest-

He is dead, truly dead, but trapped in his body-- the child's one now, from the night he Called The Water, but this one in the open air instead of beneath the river’s surface. He is dead, and his body is the same colors, featuring the same bloat, as the corpses on the shore on the day Gai had pulled him from beneath the water’s surface, where he had slept for four days. 

He is like the rest of his village, and he has died. 

Panic grips his throat— this was not how it happened, he had _not_ died then, or had that all been a dream— but just as quickly, he shakes the panic away. Why should he fear now, the worst is clearly over. He lays back in the stillness of his own body, closes eyes he was no longer capable of closing, and simply _feels_ the sensations of decay. He feels insects and birds and lizards carry small pieces of himself away, putting him in their bellies or burying him at the roots of trees or lining their nests with parts of him or storing still other parts in the among branches and leaves. He adorns the world the same way Anko had adorned his hair with beads of glass and gold so long (so short a time) ago, and somehow this feels correct, feels true, feels like The Way Things Were Supposed To Be. 

He had died, but he is still alive, still in the network of life that was all things, his body feeding the world around him, his spirit free and unbound, untethered by an enemy that had not known to steal his skull and could never have bound a priest, a Beloved of the Lady, even if they had.

He lets himself sink deep beneath the earth, to the water that runs beneath the soil, the lady's rivers that run where no human could see them, lets those rivers carry his body-- his dead body, his living body, his child's body, his adult's body, the body he had entered all of these places with-- all the way back to the hallway made of dust.

It is strange to feel so warm in such an empty place as that endless dusty hall, but he stands and savored the familiarity noneless. 

This time, as he walks down the timeless hall, footsteps silent and dragging in the dense dust beneath his still bare feet, the way seems shorter and brighter; he knows where he is going now, knows what awaits him at the end. And, indeed, it seems like less time in this hall passes until he reaches the end of it, the room with the driftwood throne and the lady, terrifying and fierce, sprawled comfortably across it. 

Have you chosen? she asks, looking at him from her many glowing eyes, curious, as if he is a rare treat and she can’t quite decide if he is for eating or playing with or something else. He feels that fear again, that old sick fear that occurs whenever she looked at him, and also a familiar _want-- _but not the same want as he'd felt for the baby, or his family (old or new), or the man who he'd chased as a wolf (either one of them); this is a different compulsion, one of obeisance, a want to serve. This Lady had sponsored him, Gai is right; she had extended his life beyond what was expected, had sent The Water when he'd screamed for it, when he was a child and hadn't known what he was doing, hadn't even known that it was possible, much less what the price would be— she had done these things for him, and now he will forever serve her, to repay that kindness, and though the surety of this knowledge should've scared him, it doesn’t.

The only part that might yet scare him is the thought that she might turn him against his people, his family, his loved ones, because that was is price he will never pay—

She snorts, and for all her harshness and the impatience of her teeth (teeth he'd already felt once in this ordeal), her voice is gentle when she answers his unvoiced thoughts-

They are my people, and I would not take from you the gifts I grant. I have chosen you to protect them. Now, again, before I lose my patience- Have you chosen? She is opening her mouth again slightly, showing him the teeth he'd felt dragging him beneath the waves of the Styx River-

Iruka thinks of his parents, of the soothing emptiness of the death land's shores-- he has a choice, and he _can_ stay with them forever, away from a world of chaos and violence. But he thinks of Kushina and Minato, how exhausted they'd sounded; Gai's surety; the feel of Anko's hands in his hair, braiding it so that Iruka did not have to go to meet his patron and possibly his death _entirely_ naked (and so unadorned, _unprotected, _by the gifts of his new family); the hard feel of the ash-covered spirit-earth of his destroyed village beneath his feet/his wolf-paws, the hunger he'd felt, as he'd chased the a pale stag and rider, holding tight to a baby to whom he both was and was not father-mother- 

"I will serve you from the land of the living."

Good. Finally. It took you long enough to choose. The lady tells him, but for all her exasperation she is smiling, and once again she holds him enthralled by her glowing eyes as she leans forward, spider-leg fingers reaching out to him; the marks she'd made previously are glowing silver-cold on his chest again, but it us his neck that she grasps this time, and _squeezes, _and instead of choking the breath from his lungs, the pressure seems to force air back in, and he takes one stabbing painful breath and another and another-

and he opens his eyes in the dim light of early morning, back in the familiar furs and blankets of the sick-room. The room is still-- he can hear nobody moving, but he _can_ hear someone sleep-breathing beside him-- he sits up, wincing at the pain in his chest, as the poultice and scabs pull with his movement-- but it isn’t the familiar lancing pain he'd felt from the fox’s head, every time before. 

It is Anko who is sleeping beside him, twisted uncomfortably in her chair, her head tilted backwards in a way almost certain to result in a cramp later. 

All the times he'd woken previously, he hadn't been able to tell what he was experiencing was real or hallucination (and, anyway, the hallucinations were just a different kind of real). Now, though, he Knows which land this is— the land of the living— and he knows also that his initiation is over, and that he’s passed. The heat under the blankets is scratchy, the old sweat and new sweat uncomfortable-- he pushes the blankets off his body (too thin, hadn't eaten solid food for too long), and looks down at himself, at the puffy edges of the fox-head wound. It is no longer raw, covered with scabs thick enough to prevent the venom in the poultice from accessing his blood, from dragging him down to the Lady oncemore.

He would no longer need such venom to help him reach her, or the lands of the dead, after this. He knows that— but, all the same, he doesn’t try to scratch the itchy flakes of the poultice away-- he may not need it, but that doesn’t mean the venom won't drag him down regardless. He tries to push himself to standing.

Nope- he sits back down heavily on shaky legs. Not ready for that yet.

His movements wake Anko, and she says his name in relief, half a sob and half a laugh, reaching out to him. She is careful not to compress his chest as she tugs his shoulders back, both hugging him and urging him to lay down. "Umino, you're awake! Should- Let me get Kushina, if you're not well-"

"I'm fine. Just thirsty." Iruka says, hoarsely. "Let her sleep." He grabs Anko's hand as she moved to leave his side, to get him water, and squeezes it. "My name is Iruka."

"Iruka?" She repeats, and then sat back with a laugh, closing her eyes. She squeezes his hand back, “Figures you’d name yourself for those fish. Gai is going to be _so smug, _we'll never hear the end of it. Welcome home, Iruka." 

He is very glad to be home.

**Author's Note:**

> okay. some extra nerdy stuff.
> 
> Some specifics that did come from the sarmations:  
\-- The sarmations did have warrior women and some glorious battle-queens, and they did also have a practice of cauterizing the breasts of AFAB infants. There is a superstition, echoed here, that doing so will direct all the strength that otherwise would've gone into the breast into the muscles of the shoulders and the arm, thus giving them superior strength with their bows. It's thought that this is what inspired the Amazons, as described by the ancient Greeks.  
I do not know of any sources that indicate that anyone did this with both breasts, and it was done to infants before they were aware of anything. Those deviations are my own.
> 
> \-- the recurve bows are real. the diagrams of them are terrifying. there've been inscriptions found on tombs that the bows could shoot arrows up to half a kilometer. that may be boasting, but these are terrifying weapons nevertheless.
> 
> \-- Scythians and sarmations absolutely did love fine craftwork of all kinds-- look up some of the grave goods found in their tombs, they're glorious
> 
> \-- The smoke-tent Iruka uses is a combination of two different original things. they had tents in which you inhaled cannabis smoke, but those tents were small and generally could only fit one's head inside. There are, separately, mentions of smoke baths in larger sauna tents, referred to in the greek histories. I combined both of those into the small one-person initiation tent.
> 
> \-- The scythians were said to tip their bows in a poison made of snake venom, though it was also literally made of rotten venomous snakes, so how much of the terrifying nature of that poison came from the venom and how much of it came from the fact that they shot arrows coated in decay into the flesh of their enemies is kind of hard to say. These were a terrifying people.
> 
> \-- The specifics of all the religious rituals, supernatural events, and the traveling between worlds is an amalgam of many ancient-world sources (and contemporary-world-- there's been some really interesting research into brainwave patterns during trances of this kind), including some epic poems, things relayed in artwork and legends, and some stuff surrounding mystery cults. However, specific practices for religious events-- such as what might go into the training of a priest-- are not really easy to pinpoint directly. All of that which appears in this story is basically an aggregate, rather than derived from one specific source.
> 
> That's probably more than enough nerdery for most people.
> 
> There's a lot of different versions of this story/this world in my head, more than the other AU's-- there's one version of this story, for instance, where it's Kakashi who pulls Iruka from the river. this version is the one that leads to another story that I might want to tell later, though, and for that one, Kakashi is not a member of the war-band, and thus doesn't show up in this story. :C  
next time, Kakashi. he shows up right quick in the next story.
> 
> \- * [42]


End file.
